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| Aqueduct Bridge at Georgetown.1 |
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| Theodore Runyon. |
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banners, and heard the sounds of their measured foot-falls borne on the still night air, with the deepest emotions, for it was the first initial act of an opening campaign in civil warfare, whose importance no man could estimate.
two miles distant from this passing column was another crossing the long Bridge.
It consisted of the National Rifles under Captain Smead, and a company of Zouaves under Captain Powell, who drove the insurgent pickets toward Alexandria, and took position at Roach's Spring, a half a mile from the Virginia end of the Bridge.
These were immediately followed by the constitutional Guards of the District of Columbia under Captain Digges, who advanced about four miles on the road toward Alexandria.
At two o'clock in the morning, a heavy body, composed of the New York Seventh Regiment; three New Jersey regiments (Second, Third, and Fourth), under Brigadier-General Theodore Runyon, and the New York Twelfth and twenty-fifth, passed over.
The New York troops were commanded by Major-General Charles W.
Sandford, who, at the call of the President, had offered his entire division to the service of the country.
the New York Seventh Regiment was halted at the end of the long
1 this is a view of the Aqueduct Bridge at Georgetown, over which flow the waters of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, in its extension to Alexandria, after having traversed the valley of the Potomac from the eastern base of the Alleghany Mountains. The picture is from a sketch made by the writer in the spring of 1865, from the piazza in the rear of the Cumberland House, which was the residence of Francis S. Key, author of “the Star-Spangled banner,” at the time when that poem was written. See Lossing's Pictorial field-book of the War of 1812. Arlington Hights are seen beyond the Potomac, with Fort Bennett on the extreme right, the flag of Fort Corcoran in the center, and three block-houses on the left, which guarded the Virginia end of the Bridge. Several of these block-houses were built on Arlington Hights early in the War, all having the same general character of the one delineated in the annexed engraving. They were built of heavy hewn timber, and were sometimes used as signal-stations.
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| Block-house. |
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